When Kandala Siva and Dasari Saiteja went for an appointment at Identità offices, they were not expecting to spend the next month-and-a-half in jail. 

“I thought they just had a few questions because I was in the process of changing my employer. How could I have known I was going to be arrested,” Siva said, recalling his ordeal last January. 

The two Indian nationals were charged with submitting forged lease agreements to Identità and were kept in preventive custody for a month-and-a-half out of fear they could leave the country. They were acquitted last week.

But the ordeal they endured as they were incarcerated until the judgment will forever haunt them.

Saiteja, 25, and Siva, 28, were first locked up at the police depot in Floriana and then at the Corradino Correctional Facility. 

“It was so humiliating to be led out by police in handcuffs as if I were a criminal,” Saiteja said.  

“The room in the Floriana lock-up had no windows. There was only a small opening that allowed guards to pass on food. The dim lighting came from a single bulb,” Siva recalled. 

After a night in the lock-up, the two Indian men were transferred to the Corradino prison. 

They said they first spent three days in Corradino’s division 6, where they were kept inside their cells for 23 hours a day. 

“I was depressed and afraid because I did not know what would happen next,” Saiteja said. 

“I kept telling myself that we did not do anything wrong. I had paid my agent, so I still couldn’t understand why I was in prison,” he said. 

After being moved to other divisions in prison, Saiteja and Siva had other worries. 

“I didn’t feel safe being around potentially violent people,” Saiteja said.

I spent most of my time in bed and put a blanket above my head every night and cried

Both recall the stench of smoke as other inmates constantly lit cigarettes. 

“I spent most of my time in bed and put a blanket above my head every night and cried,” Siva said. 

Siva said a social worker met him to ask why he was not participating in any way in prison life. 

“I told her plainly that I did not accept why I was in prison and didn’t want to admit I was there,” he said. 

Even though he’s out of jail, Siva said he finds trouble sleeping.

“When I close my eyes, I’m still hearing the sounds of prison,” he said. 

When the two were acquitted last week, Saiteja received a nasty surprise as he learned he had been terminated from his job in February while he was in prison.

The reason for termination: ‘Did not report for work,’ a Jobs Plus letter shows.

In Malta, third-country nationals have 10 days to find new employment when they lose or resign from a job, or risk deportation. 

His lawyers are now trying to regulate Saiteja’s status in Malta since he was not notified of his termination while he was in prison. 

Like Saiteja and Siva, Mohammed Idris also had his residence document listed in the same Naxxar apartment even though he did not live there. 

He was also charged in Malta for giving false information to a public authority and committing forgery but pleaded guilty and was deported to India without serving jail time.

Agent charged in India

In Hyderabad, India, Idris filed a police report against Ghanta.

Idris explained in the report how, in the first half of 2022, he paid around €5,500 to Abroad Study Plan, an employment agency owned by Ghanta, for a job in Malta. Idris was given his visa and travelled to Malta in July. 

“There [in Malta] Ghanta Anil Kumar provided fake documents like rental agreement, Housing Authority approval and medical approval also,” the report filed by Idris reads.

Ghanta did not provide any job for Idris, the report says. 

Following his statement and those of two other witnesses, Ghanta was arrested and charged on February 19. 

Two other men have also been charged. 

In October, Times of Malta reported how Ghanta, through his agency Abroad Study Plan, charged Indian nationals thousands for the chance to migrate to Malta with a well-paid job. 

But when they arrived in Malta, the job they had been promised did not exist. 

In November, nine Indian nationals asked police in Hyderabad to investigate “fraudulent” immigration agencies, including Abroad Study Plan. 

Contacted in January, Ghanta claimed he was not responsible for providing housing or medical documents.

“I’m responsible only for employment documents and the job,” he said, adding: “I’m not [a] rental agency or a medical clinic to give documents.”

Ghanta said he never provided forged documents to his clients, insisting reports against him are aimed at damaging his “consultancy’s reputation”. 

This time around, he could not be reached for comment.

Acquitted in court

Siva and Saiteja were acquitted of criminal charges last week.

Magistrate Yana Micallef Stafrace ruled that they were unaware that the documents they handed to Identità were false.

The man who allegedly provided them with the fake documents, Anil Kumar Ghanta, has been charged in India with criminal breach of trust, forgery and cheating related to the manipulation of funds.

The charge sheet has been seen by Times of Malta.

Siva and Saiteja were charged in mid-January and were kept in preventive custody for a month-and-a-half out of fear they could leave the country. 

During the trial, two Identità officials explained how the agency zeroed in on a Naxxar apartment after investigations showed that a person filed a forged leasing agreement and Housing Authority documents listing the flat as their address.

Identità asked the apartment’s owner to provide them with a list of all the people who had a lease agreement.

Both Siva and Saiteja were not on the list despite providing documents to Identità saying they were living in the apartment.

The two were then asked to go to Identità offices for a meeting with the compliance office. After they were questioned, they were taken into police custody.

In his testimony, Saiteja said he took a bank loan to pay Ghanta €6,000 to act as an agent who took responsibility for all the documentation and things he needed to move to Malta. 

It was Ghanta who gave him the lease agreement, Saiteja told the court.

Unlike Saiteja, Siva did not come to Malta through Ghanta but another agent, whom he paid between €6,000 and €7,000. 

He got in touch with Ghanta through a friend when he needed a rental agreement, among other documents.

Siva said Ghanta gave him the rental document through his friend. 

In her two judgments, magistrate Yana Micallef Stafrace ruled that Saiteja and Siva did not intend to commit a crime. 

She also said the prosecution’s case was based on witness testimony, photocopied documents and claims that documents were forged without any proof.

Lawyers Alex Scerri Herrera and Matthew Xuereb were defence counsel.